Wireless service fees have decreased significantly because of competition among wireless providers. This has resulted in wireless phones becoming ubiquitous and basic service becoming a commodity. As service fees bottom out, wireless service providers distinguish their offerings through means other than rates, such as by offering supplementary features as options.
In addition, wireless carriers today are faced with creating more efficient distribution channels, increasing customer satisfaction, while also improving margin and profitability. Industry trends are pushing the sale of handsets further into the retail channel. Phone activation is regarded as a critical process in today's severely competitive telecom industry. Subscribers prefer a speedy, hassle-free set-up process. Thus, companies need to ensure that newly ported numbers are activated at the earliest while order fallouts and delays are kept at a minimum.
Provisioning is currently accomplished using a traditional water flow process, wherein the order is taken and the services/device is provisioned. The cost and effort of provisioning handsets, activating users, and updating handset parameters can be greatly reduced by using over-the-air activation mechanisms. Over the Air Service Provisioning (OTASP) allows a potential wireless service subscriber to activate new wireless services, and allows an existing wireless subscriber to make services changes without the intervention of a third party. To set up service, a new subscriber provides the intended service provider sufficient information (e.g., name, address, etc.) to prove credit-worthiness and establish a record within the billing system of the service provider. In addition, the ESN of the mobile station needs to be given to the provider.
Once the provisioning is successful, a record is set up in billing and then the customer is ready to use the device. Minutes and service usage are tracked and this information is later entered into the billing system once the account is set up therein. In this process, there is no inter-dependency between activation and billing because the user is not billed until the wireless device and all services have been provisioned.
More companies are transitioning to a real-time billing system. In a real-time billing system, a rating engine supports multiple flexible rating options, so service providers can customize rates and promotional packages to meet subscriber needs. However, with a real time billing system, the user cannot make calls until the device has been enabled in the real-time billing system. The success of a new customer's wireless service activation including voice, data, messaging and content is directly dependent upon all service activation requests to complete successfully prior to the customer being active with the ability to use their services. Thus, until the subscriber is fully provisioned and set up in the billing system, customers may experience a delay in the ability to make phone calls, send text or multi-media messages, download ring tones, etc., in the length of time required to provision all voice, data, messaging and content services. When billing is not set up at the same time or before provisioning, then the network will allow the subscriber onto the network. However, when the network queries billing to see if the subscriber is authorized to perform the action the subscriber is attempting, the billing may deny this action to the subscriber. When billing is set up first, a subscriber is being billed before the subscriber actually has the ability to use the service.
Further, the ability for wireless providers to rate new customers on a real-time basis is not available until all requested services have successfully completed. Nevertheless, errors in a provisioning activation system should not be allowed to delay the setup of a user into the billing system. Thus, activation of wireless devices within a real time billing infrastructure presents a challenge.